Have you even imagined being crouched in the same place for hours on end, exposed to mosquito bites, night after night, day after day, enduring hot and cold to get a good image of a tapir or of exotic birds? This is the type of discomfort that nature photographers have to put up with in order to capture the images we enjoy in books, magazines and the documentaries we watch on television.
Nature photography was one of the first media that showed us the world that surrounds us and was for a long time, the only means through which people could see animals and places that they perhaps would never have seen. Later, cinema and then video contributed to expanding our horizons. Surely we seen a jaguar in a photograph, but how many of us have seen one in its natural habitat? Perhaps only a few and it its there were the importance the photographers who capture nature lies and allows us to observe it up close, with no risk or discomfort.
Besides bringing our world to us, nature photography has been a very valuable tool for the study of the species, enabling the work of scientists dedicated to their conservation. Many of these scientists have become great photographers. In México, nature photography has not found the appropriate spaces for its distribution since there is not a single publication dedicated exclusively to this branch of photography. Although our country is one the four in the world with the greatest biodiversity, there are very few Mexican nature photographers. Fortunately, there are some publications, above all, the tourism press, that have allocated space like this to be able to appreciate the great diversity of species and landscapes that our Republic offers. Here is a sample of the photographic work dedicated to Mexico and its natural wonders.
Text: Eduardo Lugo ± Photo: Eduardo Lugo.